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Friday, 12 January 2018

The week that Brexit plumbed new depths of absurdity

Any
expectation that the New Year would concentrate Brexiters’ minds on the
pragmatic realities of Brexit has been abundantly dashed this week, with a string
of absurdities. Yet, absurdities though they be, each of them is revealing of
some of the deep and recurring flaws within Brexit.So, first,
came the news that David
Davis had consulted lawyers as to possible legal action against the EU for
producing documents outlining the consequences of Britain becoming a third
country to the EU after Brexit (see, for example, this
one on the consequences for road transport). The legal advice, predictably,
was that there was no basis for such an action but even to entertain the idea
is extraordinary (and to which court would the case be taken? The despised ECJ
presumably). For it is an ineluctable consequence of Brexit that, in March
2019, Britain will become a third country, and a real possibility – actually welcomed
by some Brexiters – is that there will be no deal. It was even rumoured this
week, although nothing came of it, that Britain would create a Minister charged
with planning for a no deal scenario. Thus it is bizarre that Davis would think
it illegitimate for the EU to plan for this. Equally bizarre was his claim that
the EU was not giving sufficient credence to a transition (or, in Brexit-speak,
implementation) period since – apart from the fact that this is by no means
assured – the EU documents in question did, precisely, identify this as a
possibility that could mitigate or defer the full consequences of being a third
country.This piece
of nonsense was elegantly
taken apart by Jonathan Lis in the latest of his string of excellent, excoriating
articles on the government’s approach to Brexit. But in addition to the points
he makes I think this episode is a fresh illustration of something I have
written about before on this blog (in fact, it is by a long way the most read
post), namely that Brexiters
constantly talk as if Britain is being expelled from the EU rather than
choosing to leave. So the consequences are treated as if they are a punishment
for, rather than being entailed by, that choice.The notion
of punishment also formed the backdrop to the ‘charm offensive’ visit
to Germany by Davis and Philip Hammond this week. Speaking to a business
audience, Hammond argued that it would be crazy to ‘punish’ Britain for Brexit by
creating new barriers to trade between Britain and Germany (and the EU
generally) since, currently, none exist. Well, quite. But of course that is
what the government’s policy of (hard) Brexit does.In making
these arguments, and to this audience, Hammond was channelling some recurrent
themes in Brexiter mythology going back to before the Referendum. First, that
it would be possible to get round the EU-27 by dealing directly with individual
member states, especially Germany. The Brexiters in government have repeatedly tried
this ploy and repeatedly failed. Second, that German
businesses are going to come to the rescue of Brexit and force Germany and
in turn the EU to drop its defence of the integrity of the single market. They
haven’t and they won’t (because they also care about the integrity of the
single market); and moreover they can’t (because they don’t make German, still
less EU, trade policy). And, third, that existing regulatory convergence makes
a Brexit trade deal easy. It
doesn’t, because the deal is going to be about divergence, not convergence.And then the
final absurdity, Nigel
Farage’s suggestion that he was warming to the idea of a second referendum
- not on the final terms, but a re-run of the in/out choice – in the
expectation of a more emphatic vote to leave to scarify the ‘remoaners’ once
and for all. As many commentators have pointed out, this is most obviously understood
in terms of Farage’s desire to be back in the limelight and to reprise what no
doubt he considers his finest hour.But I think
there is something deeper here than Farage’s ego. There is a significant strand
of Brexiter thinking, exemplified by Farage, which is besotted with a self-pitying
sense of victimhood. For these people, winning the Referendum was actually a
catastrophe, taking away their victim status and requiring them to do something
quite hateful to them: to take
responsibility for delivering what they said they wanted and which they
claimed would be easy. It is that which accounts for the way that since the
Referendum they have continually acted as if they were still fighting it. And, more
profoundly, it directly feeds into talking about Brexit as if Britain were
being forced out of the EU on ‘punitive’ terms, thus perpetuating a sense of
victimhood. In this way, there is a seamless weave between Farage’s desire to
re-live his moment in the sun, Davis’s attempt to blame the EU for the
consequences of Brexit, and Hammond’s talk of post-Brexit trade on anything
other than near identical terms to EU membership being punitive.Until the
Referendum – or at least until the Article 50 letter – Britain could keep going
round these endless loops of brassy, breezy optimism (‘they need us more than
we need them’ and variants thereof) and sullen, lachrymose victimhood (‘ordinary
folk done down by the EUSSR and the establishment’). That won’t do now that
Brexit is happening, and happening very soon. Brexiters love to say that the
refusal of ‘remoaners’ to accept Brexit is undermining the country in the EU
negotiations but the reality is that what makes Britain ridiculous – and incomprehensible
– to the EU is, precisely, the deep-rooted inability of Brexiters to accept Brexit.For
Brexiters are no longer – if they ever were – the insurgents. Now, they drive
government policy and are in the key positions of authority to deliver Brexit.
And that has exposed both their completely inadequate grasp of the
practicalities of what Brexit means and their psychological aversion to taking
responsibility for it. Farage apparently believes that a second referendum
would deliver an overwhelming mandate for Brexit but I suspect that in his
heart of hearts he – and many other Brexiters – would prefer to lose such a
Referendum. Then, not only would all the boring practicalities of
responsibility to deliver an impossible policy be avoided but also Brexiters
could return to their comfort zone of victimhood.And if that
analysis is right, then the absurdity of Britain leaving the EU becomes truly enormous:
for it means that we are doing so against the wishes not just of remainers but
of leavers too.

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About Me

I am Professor of Organization Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London, and was previously a Professor at Cambridge University and Warwick University. I am a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (FAcSS). I originally studied Economics and Politics at Manchester University, where I also gained a PhD on the regulation of financial services. I blog in a personal capacity and all views expressed are mine, not those of my employer. My Brexit Blog is accompanied by a twitter feed @chrisgreybrexit. For media enquiries, contact Samantha.daynes@rhul.ac.uk